Agriculture News
Bring the Dairy Farm into Your Classroom
Discover Dairy | Posted on August 16, 2018“Adopt A Cow” Year-Long Learning Experience. Forget the guinea pig. How about adopting a 1,500-pound dairy cow your classroom mascot? Don’t worry about finding a pen big enough to hold her. The photos and stories we’ll send you about her life on the farm will make her “come alive” for your students! Here is an opportunity to use the “Discover Dairy” Lesson Series to create a year-long discovery for your students to explore where their food comes from. Once you complete and submit the enrollment form below, your classroom will be registered to “Adopt a Cow.” Registrations for each academic year are due by September 30th, 2018, and you’ll receive your introductory kit with details about your cow in November. You’ll find out what her name is, when her birthday is, where she lives and how the farmer takes care of her. We’ll also send photos of the cow, bookmarks and activity sheets for the students, and a poster to hang up. Then, in January and March, you’ll receive updates about your dairy cow and the dairy farm where she lives.
How free-range access impacts poultry health, welfare
Watt Ag Net | Posted on August 16, 2018While some of poultry efficiency can be attributed to genetics and improvements in nutrition, bringing birds inside also improved production. “We were able to control their environment, and we were able to protect the animal,” Pescatore said. However, with the separation between farming and the general public continuously growing, there is an increased interest from consumers to better understand where their food comes from — hence the increased interest in free-range poultry production, he explained. Pescatore and his associates took an in-depth look at free-range access and whether or not it has an impact on animal welfare. Hens with outdoor access had lower plumage damage and a reduced incidence of footpad dermatitis compared to cage hens. Structural bone integrity was better, too. Free-range hens do have better bone integrity; however, that improved integrity is not enough to prevent fractures or keel-bone deformities, Pescatore explained.“As the birds have more access to move, they have more chance of flying, running into things and flying higher,” he said. These are all issues that can attribute to bone issues.
Editorial: Lack of guestworker bill leaves farmers hanging
Capital Press | Posted on August 16, 2018Apparently, Congress can afford to put off revamping the H-2A guestworker program. But farmers can’t.Called the H-2A visa, it allows farmers to bring in guestworkers from outside the U.S. to do the work that Americans will not do. To qualify to bring H-2A workers to their farm to harvest fruits or vegetables, prune trees or do other work, farmers first have to advertise the jobs to Americans. Once they can’t get enough domestic workers, they can apply for foreign workers, but they have to pay to get the paperwork through the federal government. They then must pay to get the workers to the farm and back to their home country and provide housing. They also must pay the H-2A workers a higher minimum wage — $14.12 an hour in Washington state — established by the federal government. This is to prevent farmers from using “low-cost” H-2A workers to displace domestic workers. Though some in the House continued to work to get an improved guestworker program passed, others appeared to be intent on holding off until after the November elections.That’s too bad. It’s not like Congress has a sterling record for incumbents to run on. One would think that passing a bill to help U.S. farmers harvest the food they need to feed Americans would be a top priority among elected leaders.
Company launches service to reduce fees from Syngenta lawsuit
Feedstuffs | Posted on August 16, 2018Legal Expense Solutions (LES) has launched a service to advocate for farmers across the country to reduce fees paid to attorneys in the $1.51 billion Syngenta biotech corn settlement, some of which LES argues may be “excessive, unnecessary and unethical.” According to LES, tens of thousands of farmers have retained their own attorneys, with hundreds of thousands more being represented by a consortium of law firms in the class action. The settlement requires that no claimant will receive more money per acre/bushel than any other for at least one year.LES said individual attorneys have retained some farmers at fees of 40% or more of the farmer's recovery, while the class settlement attorneys to the court have posted their intent to request up to 33.333% of the settlement, plus expenses (possibly totaling more than $500 million).
The Arid West Moves East, With Big Implications For Agriculture
NPR | Posted on August 16, 2018The American West appears to be moving east. New research shows the line on the map that divides the North American continent into arid Western regions and humid Eastern regions is shifting, with profound implications for American agriculture. In western Oklahoma, farmers like Benji White and his wife, Lori, have become ranchers.The Whites run 550 head on about 5,000 acres at B&L Red Angus, the family's seedstock and commercial ranching outfit near the town of Putnam in western Oklahoma. The Whites used to grow wheat and other grains, but they've stopped farming to expand the ranching business."Farming is kind of a one-shot deal," said Benji White. "If you don't get rain, where we're completely dry-land, you lose everything. Crop insurance doesn't really pay for all the expenses."Scientists say this shift — from grains to cattle and turning cropland into rangeland — could happen a lot more often.
Trade War Strands Ship With $20 Million In U.S. Soybeans Off China
Huffington Post | Posted on August 16, 2018A ship packed with $20 million in American soybeans has been chugging in circles off the coast of China after failing to beat the imposition of retaliatory tariffs in the nation’s trade war with the Trump administration. The Peak Pegasus, owned by JP Morgan Asset Management, raced to China hoping to clear customs before China slapped a 25 percent tariff on U.S. soybeans to strike back against Trump administration tariffs. It was scheduled to unload about 77,000 ton of U.S. soybeans in the northern Chinese port of Dalian on July 6. But it arrived too late and has been idling in the Yellow Sea ever since. It missed the deadline by just hours.
New federal judge put in place for latest Smithfield lawsuit
Meat + Poultry | Posted on August 16, 2018A new federal judge will hear the latest nuisance lawsuit against Smithfield Foods’ hog production division. US District Judge David Faber, from the Southern District of West Virginia, will replace US District Judge Earl Britt from the Eastern District of North Carolina.
Independent ranchers seek injunction of beef checkoff funds in 13 more states
Tri State Livestock News | Posted on August 16, 2018National independent rancher group Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers of America (R-CALF USA) today moved to expand their legal campaign to end the unconstitutional administration of the Beef Checkoff program by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The current injunction against collection of checkoff funds, upheld by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in April, only applies to collection of checkoff funds in Montana. R-CALF USA is now asking for a halt to checkoff funds in Hawaii, Indiana, Kansas, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Vermont, and Wisconsin as well.
Dairy farmers come together in effort to raise milk prices
Caledonian Record | Posted on August 16, 2018In order to kick off a national effort to raise prices and prevent another four-year downturn, the Northeast dairy cooperative Agri-Mark invited stakeholders from across the country to a summit at the Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza to explore systemic solutions.“It is a travesty that farmers who work so hard to produce such a crucial food product cannot support their families and farms on the production of that food,” Wellington said.The event drew about 350 farmers, personnel from cooperatives, or organizations dedicated to marketing farmers’ milk; economists and lawmakers from throughout the Northeast to as far as California. Economists and dairy group leaders shared proposals to curtail the oversupply and prevent farmers from creating another bloated market.Wellington, also senior vice president of economics, communications and legislative affairs for Agri-Mark, shared his direct base plan, which he said would issue financial penalties against farmers who produce more than their historic base when the milk price falls below $20 per hundredweight.The historic base would use the highest monthly production average over a three-year period, Wellington said, which would incorporate calculations that would use daily production. Future monthly bases would be calculated by multiplying the daily base by the number of days in a month.A dairy farmer commission would be created to oversee the program and would also implement temporary base reductions whenever the price falls below $20 per hundredweight, Wellington said. The decrease in price would dictate the reduction percentage.
As Crisis Rocks Dairy Industry, Farmers Focus On How To Manage Milk Supply
Vermont Public Radio | Posted on August 16, 2018“In Vermont alone we’ve lost 66 this year. So we’re talking 8-10 percent of Vermont farmers have gone out of business this year,” he said. “Something has to change. We can’t continue to keep the current system in place if we’re going to retain farmers.” If crisis creates opportunity, then the meeting Monday might be the best chance in years to gain support for some sort of a system to manage the milk supply, Tebbetts said.The market now is awash in too much milk. And for economic reasons, farmers often add more cows so they can sell more milk just to keep afloat as prices fall. But it’s a vicious circle because it leads to even more over-supply. Tebbetts said there’s got to be a better way.“Instead of when the price goes south, that you have to increase your production, this approach may be like we’re going to have incentives to not have you put on more cows [and] increase production which drops the price to the farmers,” he said.And the region's largest dairy co-op, Agri-Mark, wants to explore supply management. Bob Wellington is its senior vice president and a dairy economist.He said several different supply management proposals will be up for discussion next week. One is called a “base-excess” plan. It would simply pay farmers a set amount for milk produced at their historical production level – call that the base – and then anything over the base – the excess – would earn the farmer less.